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Frontier has an interesting loyalty program. They are one of the few airlines that still gives you credit for the actual miles that you fly (rather than basing your “miles” accrual on the cost of the ticket). They also allow family pooling and give you 1 mile per $1 spent on all purchases using their co-branded credit card. Their mileage expiration policy is a bit draconian compared to other airlines (after only 12 months of inactivity) but so far I have managed to avoid having my miles expire.

a white airplane in the sky

Finally Redeeming My Frontier Miles

The problem I have had is that I almost never find a good use for redeeming my my miles. Because the cash cost of their flights is almost always so low, it doesn’t make sense to redeem miles. They charge as few as 10,000 miles for a one-way ticket to most destinations in the US. Sometimes the price is 15,000 or 20,000 depending on the date and route that you’re flying, and international destinations are usually more.

But when you compare that with a flight that costs $59, it seems a bit ridiculous to pay 10,000 miles to redeem it instead.

I actually have about 40,000 miles saved up from flights that we have taken over the past few years. Since Frontier has a generous family pooling program, it can be easy to rack up the miles when the miles you earn with every trip you take get multiplied by 8!

a screenshot of a pool

A last-minute trip

Most of my travel is booked fairly far in advance. I am a planner by nature, so it’s pretty rare that I leave my travel plans to the last second. But recently I had the chance to take a last-minute trip out to Utah to both visit my son who is in college out there and watch my alma mater (the University of Cincinnati) play in an NIT basketball game. I didn’t find out that they would be playing in Utah until late Sunday night, so I booked travel Monday morning for a Wednesday to Friday trip. I used 9K American Airlines AAdvantage miles for the outbound leg, but there was not great award availability on the Friday return on the major airlines. Cash prices were also crazy.

Enter Frontier Airlines miles. I was able to use 10,000 Frontier miles to book a trip that had a cash cost of $175

a screenshot of a flight ticket

Getting 1.75 cents per mile out of a Frontier mile represents pretty good value. Yes, it has a 8 hour layover in Denver that is a BIT longer than I would prefer, but at least it’s not one of those patented Frontier “overnight in DEN” layovers. Since I work remotely, I can easily just work from the lounge.

The Bottom Line

Sometimes I have found it a bit tricky to actually be able to redeem my Frontier Airlines miles. When the cash cost of a ticket is so low, it seems silly to instead redeem 10,000 miles. But recently I was able to use my Frontier miles (for the first time ever!) to offset the cost of a last-minute trip to visit my son. Getting 1.75 cents per mile out of my Frontier miles represents pretty outstanding value IMO.

What about you? Have you ever had a good redemption of Frontier miles? Leave it in the comments below.


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